


Like Ghost Horses Wandering

by Ash_Cassidy97



Category: Godless (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, F/M, This is probably the best thing I've written, and Roy and Alice, largely this is a love letter about the show, on the other hand it does talk a fair bit about humanity and the old west, so there's that., this is largely optimistic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 18:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13840896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash_Cassidy97/pseuds/Ash_Cassidy97
Summary: They were sand-scrubbed women of ill repute. The widower and the mayor. More spirit than anything else at this point. Folk liked to say that the west will take what it will and leave the rest to the buzzards and flies.“You made the right choice when you told me to leave the first time,” Roy will tell her. Like that matters. Like she doesn’t have 30 horses that are worthless right now.





	Like Ghost Horses Wandering

They were sand-scrubbed women of ill repute. The widower and the mayor. More spirit than anything else at this point. Folk liked to say that the west will take what it will and leave the rest to the buzzards and flies.

 

“You made the right choice when you told me to leave the first time,” Roy will tell her. Like that matters. Like she doesn’t have 30 horses that are worthless right now.

 

Her second husband taught her that, how to stand on her own feet. He taught her to shoot, but he taught her a bow first and how to ride. She taught him that white women could love just fine. They shot him in the back.

 

She wore a yellow dress that day, canary yellow. She learned how to handle a pistol in a rough-cut way. And she learned that the right thing wasn’t the lawful way sometimes, thanks to Truckee’s dad. And there was a fucking reason she won’t marry another man again. She knifed a man that day, killing him. Truckee’s dad was kind, a man of few words, and she fell in love because he taught her how to kill a man more efficiently without expectation of an exchange.

 

Mary-Agnes had had it. She wore pants with suspenders and has a fancy about being a kept woman some days. She’s faster on the draw than the deputy, and that matters more to the kid than to her. She’s a woman in a man’s world, and she wasn’t going to be dead. Here and now. That’s what mattered. Eighty-three men were dead, and they all needed to step up.

 

And there was respect between them, had to have been, the way they were both living, how they were treated like lepers by the town, and needed by the folks still breathing.

 

“Why you never go into town?” Roy asks, leaning against a fence post.

 

“They don’t like me.”

 

And Roy knows how men work as well as he knows horses. He gets off his horse, lets a man spit on a kid, on him, because not all fights can be won with guns. And Roy was a lot simpler than people gave him credit for. A good horse, a good haul, that was the most he could ask for. Until a woman shot him in the dark, no hesitation, no last warning.

 

He could run. There’s 30 horses rearing to go. He could leave this woman and her kid without a second look back, but there’s something there. Some debt, and Roy doesn’t like more ghosts than he already has to be hanging around. And he has a letter that’s been needing to get read.

 

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Truckee asks him.

 

“Don’t have much need.” If he’d left, somebody would pick this little family off, let the sand wash them away, not that Alice wouldn’t take anybody who tried it with her. But they’d all end up dead, and he can’t let that happen as easily as he’d like.

 

They still brought those horses into town. There was little give to her, little give in any of the folks who stayed in the west. The wind would tear them down if they bent a little. And she was all ready to sell the ranch, ready to give it all up.

 

Roy never wanted to shoot a gun, never wanted to teach anybody else, especially not an innocent kid, one raised away from the cruelty of humans. He wouldn’t put that curse on somebody else. And he hated it that Truckee was developing that hardness that lives in a man who decides to make his living in the west. But kids grow up, even out in the openness. And they grow up much faster and harder in the sand.

 

And  _ God _ , he still wanted to go home with Frank on some level, because it was Frank, and he was family in a way. He was. Not nobody can hurt you like family. But the right thing is rarely the easy thing.

 

They say horses come from the wind, destined to wander. And those good with horses share the same fate, never staying in one place for too long. And like mustangs, westerners are always going to have trouble with the law, always going to want to butt in when they aren’t wanted. And Roy, Roy was no different.

 

He shot the snake’s head off. He hesitated because they’d know who he was now. He was no longer a simple wanderer with a good hand toward horses. He never counted on Alice Fletcher, few do. More soul than body to her, easy to lose her in the sand and wind of the desert. But they all keep coming back.

 

And in all of it, they’re all building a church, a place of hope, of wanting hope, which is almost the same thing out here. And Maggie knows that, knows what’s it’s like to live without hope, letting wind pull them on through the dark. And somehow in all of this misery, people keep just right on living, like there’s nothing to it.

 

Roy tried to pay his debt one day, bought home money in a white bag like it was nothing, like he had everything, in a fancy suit. Like he’s salvation, like he’s a success to all them before. Few things ever made him feel as guilty as that small, weathered woman, and those kids who look like he could’ve been one of them, like he’s righteous. But he still can’t read, he hasn’t risen that much in life to not feel like he’s been condemned. But he’s too good a man to take that hope away from the sister, from those children.

 

There are some things a man can’t let go, not enough good in them. And by and large, those things are stupid. “Roy, come on, Roy.”

 

So he left over a damn letter. Each and every time in a fashion. He was good at letting people damn him, at being left in all kinds of ways. But he wasn’t good at leaving, not the way some people got.

 

“Are you mad at me too?”

 

Alice was never good at giving things up. She had a jacket covered in blood, and by the land under her feet, she was not good at letting things go. And Roy should’ve known that at the start of it all. But he left anyway. And Alice wasn’t naive enough to think she could hold back the wind or wild horses or rain or desolate cowboys.

 

“I hope so,” she’ll say to Truckee because she’s not naive. But it damn near broke her in a way that nothing has for a long time, because she had hope for Roy, but not for them. Alice never had enough give in her to lie to herself.

 

The townspeople hung up their cross on thin rope, pulling it up through their own strength, on a structure without walls, and barely a floor. They just kept on ticking. Sadie dreamt of the last time she’d seen her man alive, because it was another day, just like any other day. They used to be good, clean (more or less) folks, smiling all pretty like. They used to be cleanly happy.

 

“We got about three.” You do the best you got with what you have. No use whining about the wishes of all. And men chase newspapers and steal horses. Whitey runs for his sweetheart, in the way all men do some time or other.

 

“He’ll come back,” Truckee’s grandmother promises. But Alice knows her boy, raised him to have little give for this world, brought him up as someone who does what needs to be done. She didn’t kill his hope the way she had hers done; she’s not cruel.

 

“But here I am.” Whitey does the best he can do with what he has. He’s too young to not have hope, paired with a hard sense of reality. He’s young; he has over forty souls he’s responsible for. He wears .45’s, and he knows how to shoot them, dumb enough to do it as well.

 

Roy gets what he needs to be going to war. Some time’s a man’s got to have no give in him to do what needs to be done. He digs up a new grave, collecting another ghost while Frank burns Frank’s arm. And the sight impaired cowboy closes in.

 

And Bill siddles on up. And Roy used to be a criminal, and he gives up the slow, horse wrangler act, like he’s never killed a man, like he has no advice to give to Truckee. Bill doesn’t stop him.

 

Not that Roy wanted to come back. “Sure it wasn’t another kind of feeling that brought you back?”

 

“She ain’t mine to have, sheriff.” And Roy knows himself, done to the bone. He’s good with a horse, better with a gun. The first got him Alice. The second got him Frank. And there are ghosts in the hills to direct the living.

 

“Well, it took guts to come out here. I’ll give the boy that much.” Not half enough for what to do when Frank himself comes knocking on their door. Because Frank is a polite devil, always has been, to keep his head on his shoulders in this world.

 

But this family has had their fare share of polite whiteness, like color is the only thing they can see. People can always tell when a twister is on its way, you live long enough out here. Old soldiers never die. And sides line up fast.

 

“Where did the kids go?” And somehow, the parents always protect the children, trying to keep them out of a war none by all. The sides get picked.

 

“Damn it, sir. I had no quarrel with you.” But they ended up dead anyhow. Sides get chosen, and folks don’t get a say.

 

And they all line up to get guns, like order can fix this. They all plant one foot in front of another. And Maggie gives them their marching orders. And more women are wearing pants now, and it doesn’t feel like the victory it would’ve a dozen weeks ago. The woman in wedding white shows up with a smile and an eyebrow. She knows what’s a coming. But there are women who’ve never held a gun, much less fired it.

 

“I’m gonna kill each and every one of them before this day is over.”

 

“I see why you like her.”

 

There ain’t no give in these folks. It’ll damn them and save them all at once.

 

Alice rides on. And the dust rumbles up towards folk she doesn’t much like, for all she respects them. And they all heard the wind howl, like it carries the ghosts with it.

 

“Ain’t nothing but pure ass luck gonna save us now.” But they stand there, calm as you please, with riffles in their hands, these two women, side to side. They lived a hard life, all of them. It’s enough.

 

Whitey dies, not a shot fired on the porch. Not even a shout to be had. Not a cry of alarm. And mayhap it’s better that way, to die guns in hand. He’d like it as such.

 

The women fire the first shot. They’re not waiting for no man to start this fight. And Frank sits silent on his horse. The men set the building on fire. Frank doesn’t move.

 

The widower and mayor move as one across the roof, neat as trained soldiers as horses move up stairs and into rooms. And women get tied up like steers, and men fall off roofs. And Frank doesn’t move until Billy siddles back into town.

 

And Bill’s the one to find Whitey, to tuck his face under his coat. And too many of the women die. And still folks keep shooting and getting shot. And Bill walks out because this is his goddamn town, and Whitney was his goddamn responsibility, even if he can’t see two fucking feet in front of his face.

 

And Roy steps out because well. This is his goddamn town as well. So they stand side to side because they don’t let up none in their village. And somehow, it’s like they’re winning this fucking shootout, these women of perfectly clean origin.

 

The wind howls around them, carrying horses and ghosts away. The fires keep burning. The women walk out, covered in dust and blood, the west scorched into their bodies with their town burning. The newsman is bleeding, covered in paper.

 

It doesn’t feel like a win. And Maggie kills the dead all again in front of her lover.

 

“Easy sister. They only need to be killed but once.” And that’s not true. All these souls will haunt her dreams, though she’ll deny it. And the old, the young come out of the dust, like the west is giving something back.

 

“Giffin ain’t here.” And course he’s not. Few murderers kill because they’re brave. And the violinist lives, though she’ll wish otherwise.

 

Roy chases after him. Too late to catch him before he finds Truckee with a downed horse.

 

“It’s my fault.” And there’s no way to stop that guilt, to keep Frank from giving a child a gun.

 

“Tell me son, have you got a pappy?” And then Roy finds them. And Truckee escapes the clutches of the devil. And Roy doesn’t shoot Frank when his back turned. Truckee shot his horse, and you’d think Roy would know the kid well enough to not ask him to do something he can’t.

 

Roy keeps marching on, across the green meadow, peppered with white flowers.

 

“You care about the boy.”

 

“Pull your gun, Frank.”

 

“I love you too, son.”

 

“No, no I’ve seen my death. This ain’t it.”

 

“You’ve seen wrong.” And Frank dies. Roy sits in a green meadow, with Truckee crouched next to him. “Don’t let that old witch light me on fire again.”

 

There’s a lot of new graves, but they all cry on Whitey’s the most, their heart.

 

Maggie can’t stop crying long enough to say a word. The paster shows up, and Sadie already condemns the man.

 

“It’s a fearful thing to love what death can touch.” Somehow his words heal a little of their bitterness, their infected, infested wounds.

 

Roy leaves still.

 

“God bless you, Roy.”

 

“You too, ma’am.” He can’t even bring himself  to call her by her first name. He takes her horse, and leaves the ghost to watch over them all. He doesn’t need to carry a ghost with him anymore.

 

“Take good care of them.”

 

“I aim to.” Bill lets him go, knowingly. And Roy lets him go in much the same fashion, knowing who he is, and who Alice deserves. Roy found the pacific. Alice found the money. She’ll never go to Boston, and he’ll never be able to keep his feet still.

 

But one day, Truckee will ride out there, just to prove him wrong. He’ll meet a different Roy, one who works with troubled horses. Though, Roy still shoots the occasional trouble causer. Alice won’t ride that way. She finally let roots grow there in La Belle, not that Bill has moved in or anything. He has a healthy respect of her, and the shotgun. And somehow, they all find peace in that.

 

Because this is their town. This place of people who appear out of the dust and dawn, who work hard, drink harder, and they all can put a man down. They don’t have any give, or they’d be dead already.

 

Eighty-three men woke up, ate breakfast, kissed their family goodbye, saw their last sunrise, and died underground.

 

And those left, kept on living.

**Author's Note:**

> I fucking love this show. It’s beautiful how little dialog there is. Not a word is wasted. Being a decent horseman, I like how they manage to act like those actors can ride and do all those things.


End file.
